Week minus 7: 'A beginning'

My first week of 'real' training has been a bit of a shock to the system. Which was a little surprisingly, as I effectively had a 3 day rest - with Roger & Anna’s wedding and then driving back up to Auckland? But my legs have been decidedly heavy and tired at the start of the week, but encouragingly got better later in the week – bizarrely, as my training sessions got harder.

To give you an idea of my training plan, this was my week….

Monday: The ‘short’ swim, involving descending sets - 3 x 200m, 6 x 100m, 12 x 50m - swum at increasingly quicker rates. Stupidly, I got my target split times wrong and ended up swimming a lot harder than I meant to - which might explain some of the tiredness in my legs.

Tuesday: The ‘short’ run, intervals again whereby I run three 8 minute spurts at a hard pace with (much welcome) 2 minute jogs in between.

Wednesday: The ‘long’ swim, which was 3 x 1000m sets. Also my ‘short’ bike, which is a 50km circuit I use that includes some climbs (impossible to avoid around Auckland) around the hills and One Tree Hill and Mt Eden (nice to have some views to take my mind off it all).

Thursday: This was my nadir for the week, the ‘long’ run. It was only for 2hr15min, but it was a struggle the whole way. The legs felt like they were filled with lead the whole way and I couldn’t get any rhythm. I am running my long runs quite slowly, as I read that this is better training for an Ironman. There is the obvious reason - that after a 3.8km swim and a 180km bike, you won’t be running very fast anyway! But, also, by running slowly you actually take more strides than you would if you ran a quicker pace. This increase in strides does more for hardening the body for what it will undergo on race day – and I think this is important for Ironman training, the purpose being more to prepare the body for the physical hammering it will take, than to work on fitness. But running slowly is very difficult and I was certainly feeling it in my legs (though I since calculated that I was still running at around 4 hour marathon pace). It also didn’t help that it was an absolutely stunning evening, and I was very jealous of all the people picnicking and swimming around the Eastern Bays.

Friday: Day off – yay!

Saturday: My first combo session – swim, bike, run. Anna drives me, the wetsuit and the bike down to the Eastern Bays where she gets a coffee and reads a magazine as I go for a sea swim – this week for 40 minutes. It’s always nice to get out of the lanes and not have to flip every 50 metres, and the water is very warm at the moment. Coming out of the water, I jump onto the bike and go for a 1hr30min ride. When I reach home, I then chuck on the running shoes and head out for a 50 minute run. Being the first time I had done this for some time, it felt very weird – like I was running on some else’s legs (and I probably wish I was). It took about 5 to 10 minutes before running felt anywhere normal. It also wasn’t helped by the fact that was damn hot. But at the end of it, though I felt tired, I also felt like it was a good overall session.

Sunday: Is my ‘long’ bike day, where I biked 135km. I took my favourite loop out east around Clevedon and Maraetai – past the now ‘infamous’ Caribbean/Thai coast. It was another stunningly hot day, which made it thirsty work on the bike, but a very enjoyable ride – apart from where I couldn’t find a tap to refill my water bottles. The riding feels pretty comfortable, so it is all about trying to get the body used to riding in the aero-bar position as much possible.

And so it starts again. This week is a bit different though, as I am competing in a standard triathlon (1.5km swim, 40km bike, 10km run) on Sunday around Mission Bay. A good opportunity to go through the disciplines in race conditions, though I won’t be worried about my times, especially in transition. I’ll let you know how it went next week.